Biography

Born in 1974 in Heraklion, Greece, Minas Borboudakis started studying piano and music theory with Georgios Kaloutsis in 1985. In 1992 he moved to Munich where he continued his musical training with Olaf Dressler and Urszula Mitrenga-Wagner in piano, and Wilfried Hiller in composition. He subsequently honed his compositional skills with Peter Michael Hamel in Hamburg. He has attended a series of master classes with Luciano Berio, George Crumb, and Wolfgang Rihm in compostition and Rudolf Kehrer and Aleksey Nasedkin in piano.

Borboudakis was awarded a scholarship by the International Summer Academy of the Mozarteum University Salzburg in 2000, the Tübingen Composition Scholarship in 2003, the “Bayerische Staatsförderpreis für Musik” in 2004, and a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2007. He has been the recipient of a number of awards, most notably the third prize at the Günter Bialas International Chamber Music Competition (for Krámata) in 2002, the Rodion Shchedrin Chamber Music Award (for Choróchronos I and Σ – Cassiopeia) in 2005 and the prize of the Christoph and Stephan Kaske Foundation as recognition of his work as composer and performer in 2008. He has been invited as composer in residence by Gidon Kremer at the Lockenhaus International Chamber Music Festival in 2002, and by Peter Sadlo at the “les muséiques” festival in Basel in 2007.

Borboudakis’s music has been commissioned and performed by renowned orchestras, including the Symphonieorchester and the Rundfunkorchester of the Bavarian Radio, the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart (SWR), the Rundfunksinfonieorchester Saarbrücken (Saarland Radio), the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, the Athens State Orchestra (KOA), and the American Wind Symphony Orchestra. He has also collaborated with prominent ensembles such as Ensemble Modern, Kremerata Baltica, Münchener Kammerorchester, Singer Pur, Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik, and Camerata Athen. Notable soloists Peter Sadlo, Johannes Moser, Andreas Skouras, Alice Sara Ott and conductors Johannes Kalitzke, Tito Ceccherini, Vassilis Christopoulos, Constantinos Carydis, Carl St. Clair have frequently performed his music. He has been professionally involved with institutions and festivals such as the Bayerische Staatsoper, Deutschlandfunk, “les muséiques,” MDR Musiksommer, Kasseler Musiktage, Feldtmann Kulturell, and young.euro.classic. In 2007 his first composition for music theater, liebe. nur liebe, was premiered under the direction of Kent Nagano at the Munich Opera Festival of the Bayerische Staatsoper.

Besides working as a composer and organizing composition workshops, Borboudakis regularly appears as a pianist and conductor performing his own and other contemporary composers' works. Some of his most notable appearances have been at Deutschlandfunk’s “Forum Neue Musik” and in the Bayerische Staatsoper’s series “XX/XXI – Neue Kammermusik”, to whose promotion he has dedicated himself.

His compositional style is influenced by microtonality, percussive timbres, and sliding sounds. Some of the focal points in his work are time and space, classical philosophy, literature, mythology, and cosmological questions. Dominated by strong rhythmical impulse and experiments with electronic sounds, his music borrows elements from ancient greek tonal systems and rhythmic patterns.